Introduction
Death and futility are among a cluster of themes that closely track discussions of life's meaning.Footnote 1 Precisely why death and futility bear such a close relationship to the meaning of life has received relatively little sustained articulation beyond the oft-repeated pessimistic claim that cosmic or deep futility supervenes upon the entirety of human existence,Footnote 2 given a naturalistic view of the ultimate fate of life, both human life as well as the universe itself, where entropy, dissolution, and death are thought to have the final word. If we and all the products of our human energies including the immediate building of a family, accomplishments, and the distant traces of progeny will some day cease to exist forever, then our lives and our pursuits, indeed, existence in its entirety, are deeply futile, so the argument goes.
Both defences and attempted rebuttals of the above conditional have broadly unfolded within relatively well-defined dialectical parameters. Those who accept the consequent generally do so, I think, largely by focusing on what can be called the ‘staying-power intuition’ (SPI). Roughly, SPI is the idea that, ceteris paribus, worthwhile, significant, and meaningful things last.Footnote 3 Though SPI is vague and subject to counter-examples in various contexts, in terms of human life, SPI requires that we leave some sort of indelible mark on reality (usually articulated in a sense requiring a doctrine of post-mortem survival that itself requires the survival of the person), something which is not possible,Footnote 4 or at minimum, highly unlikely on naturalism.
Those who reject the consequent generally make one of two (or both) moves – (i) appeal to a contrary intuition, what can be called the ‘scarcity intuition’ (SI) whereby life is thought to be worthwhile, significant, and meaningful – and therefore not deeply futile – precisely because death looms on the horizon, bringing a sense of poignant urgency and specialness to fleeting life,Footnote 5 or, more often, (ii) argue that the requirement of post-mortem survival of human beings and the fruits of their labours, extending endlessly into the future, is too strong a condition to be met in order for life to be worthwhile, significant, and meaningful.Footnote 6
Within the dialectical parameters noted above, discussions over the perceived threat of death to living a meaningful life, as death is construed on naturalism, have been fruitful up to a point. In this context, death and futility are thought to link to the meaning of life as a threat to leading a meaningful life. While this analysis may be correct as far as it goes, it is surely a truncated story of their connection. Therefore, considerations of SPI can and should be supplemented in order to bring a more robust account of this relationship. This involves combining three claims which then provide the deeper rationale through which to understand something like SPI. These three claims are as follows:
(1) Entire metaphysical systems (e.g. naturalism, Christian theism) can be thought of as narratives or meta-narratives,Footnote 7 narrating across the cluster of humanly deemed existentially relevant ‘features’ of life (e.g. origins, purpose, value, pain and suffering, and how it is all going to end).
(2) The way a narrative ends qua ending, contributes to a wide range of broadly normative human responses on, possibly, emotional, aesthetic, and moral levels towards the narrative as a whole.
(3) Per (1) and (2), many have concluded that naturalistic meta-narratives are characterized by deep or cosmic futility given the way they end, and the way they end is important for such normative appraisals partly because narrative ending qua ending is important to these appraisals.
Note carefully that the reason subsumed under (1)–(3) is importantly different from the reason anchored exclusively in a principle such as SPI where futility is thought to follow from the naturalistic meta-narrative ending, given naturalistic premises about the nature of that ending. In the case of (1)–(3), the reason is even more theoretically and practically fundamental – that narrative ending qua ending is salient in our broadly normative assessments of narratives as a whole. Hence, while judging the naturalistic meta-narrative to be irredeemably futile is, no doubt, made partly on the basis of the nature of its ending (what can be called a ‘second-order futility conclusion’),Footnote 8 an important reason that the nature of the ending possesses such normative weight is that it is already anchored in the fact that narrative ending qua ending is thought to be normatively important (a first-order conclusion about endings in general).Footnote 9 Put simply, second-order futility conclusions, or second-order non-futility conclusions for that matter, would lose their force if something like first-order conclusions about the evaluative significance of narrative ending qua ending were not already in place.
Of course, introducing the concept of narrative ending presupposes an intelligible framework in which it sufficiently links up to the question of life's meaning in general and to death and futility specifically. It will only work if narrative, as a concept, appropriately relates to the meaning of life in a coherent way. In a separate work, I defend an analytic relationship between the question, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ and the concept of a narrative, whereby the question is interpreted as the request for a meta-narrative that narrates across those elements and accompanying questions of life of greatest existential import to human beings.Footnote 10 The relevant ‘elements and accompanying questions’ in need of narration largely revolve around origins, purpose, value, pain and suffering, and how life is going to end. The narrative interpretation, though, has rivals. The most common current interpretation views the question, ‘What is the meaning of life?’ as a place-holder or ‘amalgam of logically diverse questions, some coherent and answerable, some neither’.Footnote 11 Such questions generally include those about purpose, significance, and value, among others. In these cases, meaning in life then centres on ordering one's life around valuable ends, or being subjectively attracted to objective attractiveness, or realizing one's strongest desires, among others.
Space does not allow for a re-articulation of the narrative interpretation and defence of its philosophic merits over rival theories of meaning. As such, one can introduce a weaker, synthetic relationship between the meaning of life and narrative in that narrative is one, among other concepts, that importantly links to issues that are largely co-extensive with the meaning of life.Footnote 12 Here, narrative occurs alongside other theories and concepts that aid us in addressing the cluster of questions and concerns found in the meaning of life context, even if none, individually, covers all of the conceptual territory. For the purposes of this paper it is sufficient to accept the following conditional: if ‘the meaning of life’ is best understood as a meta-narrative in the analytic sense, or if narrative is one helpful way among others for addressing central meaning-of-life issues in the synthetic sense, then either way, a compelling reason exists for why the way life ends – both human life and the universe itself – has been thought to be so relevant to broadly normative appraisals of life as a whole. As I have already developed and defended the first disjunct of the antecedent elsewhere, I will here turn my attention to the consequent.
Whether or not conclusions that life is in fact cosmically futile have philosophical merit is not my concern in this paper. Rather, I am focusing on answering the question of why futility is often thought to characterize saliently naturalistic meta-narratives in a way that moves beyond the received dialectical parameters. I am primarily interested in what I term above, a ‘first-order conclusion about endings in general’, which follows from the perceived normative significance of narrative ending qua ending. On this more fundamental level, I will argue that futility is often thought to characterize naturalistic meta-narratives because the way a narrative ends has significant proleptic power to elicit a wide range of broadly normative human responses on, possibly, emotional, aesthetic, and moral levels towards the narrative as a whole in virtue of it being the ending.Footnote 13
I will first explain the rationale behind the evaluative significance of narrative ending for broadly normative appraisals of narratives as a whole. Second, I will clarify three important senses of ending, noting which is required for my argument to succeed. Third, I will propose two strategies to explain how my own proposal relates to another plausible account of the perceived connection between death and futility in a strictly naturalist world, an account Ronald Dworkin presents in chapter 6 of his Sovereign Virtue. Fourth, I will enlist my conclusions about the evaluative significance of narrative ending in order to frame and bring greater nuance to discussions of death and futility, and why futility is thought to follow from the nature of naturalistic meta-narrative endings. Finally, I will explore potential implications that the evaluative significance of narrative ending has for the tasks of defence and theodicy.
The evaluative significance of narrative ending
The way a narrative ends is important. Various claims have been made in support of this,Footnote 14 though I will discuss only one that is especially relevant in the immediate context. It is the claim that the way a narrative ends, in virtue of its being the end, has great power to elicit a wide range of broadly normative human responses on, possibly, emotional, aesthetic, and moral levels towards the narrative as a whole. This claim is important given the close connection that discussions of futility have had with the meaning of life. Conclusions of such discussions, especially those of cosmic futility, are largely connected with theses about how it is all going to end, including human life and the universe as a whole. And, it is reasonable to think that conclusions of futility are broadly normative conclusions. Furthermore, it has often been thought that naturalistic meta-narrative endings threaten the entire narrative with cosmic futility and meaninglessness, whereas theistic endings are generally thought not to pose such a threat.Footnote 15
Why should one think that a narrative's ending has such ‘retroactive’ or proleptic power? Furthermore, why can, for example, the final emotional state instantiated in a reader subsume or overshadow the cluster of varying emotional states instantiated throughout the narrative? And what gives this final state evaluative salience out of which we then adopt a settled stance toward the narrative as a whole; why is the future privileged over the present? For, as J. David Velleman notes:
What's more, the emotion that resolves a narrative cadence tends to subsume the emotions that preceded it: the triumph felt at a happy ending is the triumph of ambitions realized and anxieties allayed; the grief felt at a tragic ending is the grief of hopes dashed or loves denied. Hence the conclusory emotion in a narrative cadence embodies not just how the audience feels about the ending; it embodies how the audience feels, at the ending, about the whole story. Having passed through emotional ups and downs of the story, as one event succeeded another, the audience comes to rest in a stable attitude about the series of events in its entirety. [emphasis added]Footnote 16
This is no small point, and it seems largely correct. The ending marks the ‘last word’, after which nothing else can be said, either by way of remedying problems or destroying felicities that have come about within the narrative. If the last word is that hope is finally and irreversibly dashed, then grief will probably be salient at the end; if the last word is that ambitions have been realized, then triumph will probably be salient at the end. Perhaps more importantly, one cannot backtrack into a narrative, for example, where the grief felt at a tragic ending is the final word, and expect that one's emotional stance toward any specific event within the narrative will not now be affected, in some sense, by the ending of the narrative. The ending relevantly frames the entire story. This framing falls broadly within the normative sphere, and includes a salient emotional component. An example here will bring more clarity to the point.
Consider a case where you are dating someone. In this context, the claim under scrutiny is whether and how the end of this relationship is important for your appraisals throughout the relationship of those moments and events that compose it, as well as the relationship as a whole.Footnote 17 Here, I am referring to whether the relationship ends in something like marriage (or some culturally recognized equivalent) or dissolution, whereby each party seeks to go his or her separate way. The thought is that how it ends is very important for how you view the relationship as a whole. But in what sense is how it ends very important? Can an undesirable ending nullify the happy times in the relationship, retroactively causing them to be unhappy? This surely cannot be correct. Indeed, it is eminently reasonable to think that even if the relationship ends in dissolution, that the pre-end relationship cannot be fully robbed of, for example, the joy, richness, and vibrancy that once may have characterized it. Regardless of whether these realities cease, they were once present, and they cannot be nullified in this sense.Footnote 18 But what if those in the relationship know in advance how the relationship will end?
It seems equally plausible to think that this privileged foreknowledge will affect their appraisals now, in some sense, of what is presently occurring in the relationship. If the relationship is to end in dissolution, that fact will make some difference right now; if the relationship is to continue, for example, in marriage, that too will make some difference right now. Each of these endings will limit the evaluative horizon for how the relationship is appraised. Indeed, the relationship will likely mean something different, in some non-trivial way, depending upon how it will end. Furthermore, if those in the relationship want the relationship to end in marriage, then those pre-end joyful moments, while still possibly joyful, will not be as joyful as they could be. The joy experienced will be mitigated by knowledge of the coming dissolution. The joy is tainted. This may not make it cease from being joy (although it might), but surely it becomes less joyful. Once this ending is known, the present can never quite be the same as before. The settled perspective of looking back from the end saliently looms, as the present now somehow relevantly contains the future, though not, of course, in any strict metaphysical sense.
I think that there is an important truth here. The evaluative priority and indelibility of the final stance one takes toward a narrative as a result of the way the narrative ends provides a powerful reason for the importance of apocalyptic (ending) accounts, whether naturalistic or theistic, for how we appraise life. It is why so many have difficulty shaking conclusions of cosmic futility and meaninglessness on meta-narratives where death has the final word and love is eventually consigned, with lovers, to nothingness forever. This is partly, or largely, why so many have seen the existential (and some would argue rational) need, in order to avoid cosmic futility and retain meaningfulness, of positing an ending where life and love and other deeply held desiderata for a flourishing human existence have a lasting place. The general point, though, is that the way life ends is so important to us, because narrative ending itself is important to us. And, if we view life as a whole meta-narratively, it becomes clearer why we are so concerned with how it will all end. Neither naturalist nor theist can avoid the evaluative encroachment of the apocalypse into the present moment of their respective meta-narratives.
In summary, the evaluative priority attached to narrative ending resides in its being the last word, a ‘word’ that brings with it the finality and indelibility of a settled normative stance towards the narrative as a whole. As Christiaan Moster notes:
The ending is a necessary part of the story, notwithstanding its open-endedness; it is not a dispensable part. It affects proleptically every part of the story; no part can be considered apart from it. … Regardless of how unexpected or incongruent the end of a story is, it is decisive for the story's meaning.Footnote 19
And, as human beings, we are deeply interested in how the meta-narrative we inhabit is going to end. Many are searching for a specific kind of closure; the kind that allays our deepest hurts and satisfies our deepest longings. In the words of H. Porter Abbot, such closure involves ‘a broad range of expectations and uncertainties that arise during the course of a narrative and that part of us, at least, hopes to resolve, or close’.Footnote 20
A final important point lingers here; one that adds further plausibility to my use of the term ‘narrative’ to describe whatever it is, conceptually, that meta-narratives constructed around the cluster of issues relevant to the meaning of life are. Importantly, certain meta-narratives, naturalistic ones for example, are more like conjunctive explanations as opposed to full-blown narratives in the paradigmatic sense. But this does not mean that we should think of meta-narratives, even naturalistic ones, primarily as explanations as opposed to narratives. The reason follows from a consideration of narrative ending. For example, on naturalistic meta-narratives, the way it all ends is often, though by no means always, thought to be relevant to how we view life right now. If this is the case, then it is perhaps better to think of the meta-narrative narratively and not merely explanatorily. Importantly, we do not attach such significance or priority to the endings (or the last portion of the explanation) of non-narrative explanations.Footnote 21
For example, in explaining how it is that water boils, each part of the explanatory account is equally important in order to fully elucidate the physical process; the last component of the explanation is no more or less important than any other part. But, on one level, this is not the case, for example, on naturalistic meta-narratives. From a detached and disinterested perspective where all one is concerned with is explaining the naturalistic meta-narrative, it is true that no component of the explanation is any more important than the others. However, from the human, existentially interested standpoint, the ending does become relevant, or at least this is where the evidence points. I think this partly shows that it is more natural to think meta-narratively about ultimate explanatory accounts of the world and their features and not meta-explanatorily. We do not attach any sort of special significance to the endings of non-narrative explanations, whereas we do to explanations that at least partially merge into the category of narrative.
The concept of narrative ending
My discussion thus far of narrative ending and its evaluative significance for entire narratives invites important questions about what a narrative ending is, as well as what sense of ending is consistent, if any, with the conjunction of the general claim that narrative ending is normatively important but within meta-narratives that posit immortal life as being necessary, though not sufficient, for a meaningful life. Indeed, prima facie, it would appear that the Christian theistic meta-narrative, for example, fails to allow for the kind of view of the whole from the perspective of the end that is needed in order to appraise life as either futile or meaningful precisely because such a meta-narrative never truly ends.
Though in a slightly different context than that of the concern of this paper, John Martin Fischer notes a similar objection:
If our lives are narratives [or in the case of my paper – life in general should be viewed meta-narratively], or have the distinctive structure of narrative, then they must have endings. On this view, we cannot be immortal (insofar as our lives are narratives or have narrative value), if our lives are indeed narratives. To imagine immortal human life is to imagine human life devoid of an essential or at least very important characteristic: having narrative structure and thus a distinctive dimension of value. … strictly speaking, this is correct. If a narrative must have an ending, then it is clear that our lives cannot have the sort of meaning that involves taking a retrospective perspective on its totality, as it were, and assigning a meaning that reflects the overall arc of the lifestory.Footnote 22
Fischer proceeds to reject the worry by noting that although an immortal life resists final circumscription and appraisal as a whole from some absolute end, its parts can be thought of narratively and thus conferred with what he calls ‘narrative value’. I think Fischer's point, though plausible in its own right and helpful here, can be supplemented in light of the slightly different dilemma in the present context: the problem as posed for meta-narratives about all of life, and not just narratives about an individual life.
The dilemma can be dissolved in securing a sense of ending from which to appraise life that is also consistent with immortal life. Fortunately, such a sense is available. There are at least three relevant ways of understanding the concept of ending: (i) ending as termination, (ii) ending as telos, and (iii) ending as closure. The first sense of ending is that of something being finished. Locutions such as ‘the race is over’, or ‘I am finished with school’, or ‘it ceased to exist’, all capture important connotations of this sense of ending. The second sense of ending tracks the notion of final causality or purpose. Ideas like ‘the end of this pencil is to write’, or ‘the end of creation is to glorify God’ are examples of this sense. Importantly, ending as telos, when considered within the historical context, carries additional connotations of the purposeful progression of history towards an intended end, or for that matter, the purposeful progression of the plot within a narrative toward an intended end. Finally, the third sense of ending, ending as closure, refers to a contextually anchored settled stance with respect to a ‘problem’ or cluster of problems emerging within a given narrative or portion of that narrative.
These three senses of ending differ conceptually, though they are compatible. For example, an intended, purposeful end might also be a termination, or it may serve as the occasion for a settled stance toward a problem having emerged in the narrative. Furthermore, when comparing ending as termination and ending as closure, it is important to note that neither the presence of ending as termination nor the presence of ending as closure is sufficient for the presence of the other. That is to say, a narrative could terminate without closure, and closure could be present without a narrative terminating, at least in one important sense. Works within the horror genre are often examples of narratives that end in the terminating sense, but lack a certain kind of closure or resolution.Footnote 23
Conversely, closure can occur, even though the lives of the fictional characters in a narrative often presumably continue, as in they lived happily ever after. The post-narrative state (from the perspective of the characters, not the reader) of living happily ever after, though not an ending in the terminating sense, is still a narrative ending, because it brings an end to what J. David Velleman calls the ‘emotional cadence’ that a narrative evokes in its audience.Footnote 24 In these cases, ending is never cessation, at least from the characters' perspective. Rather, it is the resolution of a conflict or series of conflicts that have arisen over the course of the narrative, providing the settled stance toward the pre-end (end as closure) portion of the narrative. It is an end of something though not an ending in an absolute sense. Ending as closure, then, is contextual rather than absolute.
With this set of distinctions in hand, the following claims can be harmonized: (i) an ending is required in order to appraise life as either futile or meaningful, and (ii) some meta-narratives, like that of Christian theism, posit immortal life as necessary for a meaningful life and have no ending. The way out of the impasse involves two related moves. First, adopting the ending in the closure sense is sufficient for the necessary appraisal of life. And, second, contextually anchoring such closure to the portion of the meta-narrative where questions about futility and life's meaning form at least part of the plot's problem set allows for the relevant appraisal from a settled perspective, even though that perspective itself never ends in either the terminating sense or in the closure sense for that matter.Footnote 25
If one posits an immortal life and also seeks to circumscribe all of life, including the immortal life, then one can neither invoke ending as termination nor ending as closure in order to appraise that life given that the life never ends, either in terms of termination or closure. Fischer is correct to note that this is, by definition, impossible. But to see that such ultimate termination or circumscription from some privileged vantage point of ultimate closure is not necessary, we must recall the target to which the charge of futility is largely directed. That target is poignantly captured in Qohelet's memorable refrain in Ecclesiastes, ‘life under the sun’ (Ecclesiastes, 1.3).Footnote 26 The life that people are worried is threatened by futility is the life here and now.
We worry that this life might be systemically futile, one where, despite all our growth in knowledge, we know so little about the vast universe we inhabit. We worry that this life, with all its pain, suffering, and hardship might be deeply futile. We worry that the loss of this life in death brings with it irredeemable futility. The target, then, of the closure-bringing vantage point is not literally all of life, if all of life also includes indefinite post-mortem existence, it is life under the sun, that portion of the meta-narrative where the cluster of problems associated with our common human predicament palpably remain.
The settled stance of the end, then, need not be an absolute end, just an end that includes the appropriate horizon from which to appraise that part of life whose features give rise to problems and questions about meaning and futility in the first place. That relevant horizon, in the Christian theistic meta-narrative for example, is that of the new heavens and new earth where pain and sorrow are definitively eradicated, and where tears of sadness are wiped away forever. It is the vantage point of indefectible shalom. This is still an end, it is still closure, though it is neither termination nor absolute closure.
And yet, the Christian theistic meta-narrative postulate of an ending that itself never ends is coherent precisely because the sense in which it never ends is the terminating sense, and the sense in which it does end is the closure sense, where the closure sense is contextually tied to the post-lapsarian, pre-consummation portion of Christian theism's redemptive-historical narrative. So, although it must be conceded that there can be no ultimate, settled stance from which to appraise the entire Christian theistic meta-narrative if that settled stance is meant to also circumscribe indefinite post-mortem enjoyment of the beatific vision, there can be a settled stance from which to appraise the portion of the meta-narrative that is itself the salient context for the problems of futility and meaning in the first place. And this kind of settled stance is sufficient to dissolve the prima facie dilemma of needing an end from which to appraise life as either meaningful or futile, but seemingly not having such an end on meta-narratives that posit immortal existence.
Death and perceived futility: Ronald Dworkin's analysis
Though most accounts of why deep or cosmic futility is thought to supervene on a naturalistic narrative amount to little more than stating a deeply held intuition, there are some notable exceptions where such intuitions are conceptually augmented. One such exception is Ronald Dworkin's discussion, in chapter 6 of his Sovereign Virtue, of the model of impact within the general context of searching for a reasonable metric by which the good life can be measured. Part of his entry point into this discussion is to note the oft-repeated dilemma that eventually surfaces within discussions of life's meaning, and which is embodied in the ‘staying-power intuition’ (SPI) to which I alluded in the introduction:
How can it matter what happens in the absurdly tiny space and time of a single human life? Or even in the almost equally tiny episode of all sentient life taken together? The universe is so big and has lasted so long that our best scientists struggle even to give sense to the question of how big it is or how long it has lasted. One day – any second now in the history of time – the sun will explode, and then there may be nothing left that can even wonder about how we lived. How can we reconcile these two ideas: that life is nothing and that how we live is everything?Footnote 27
This problem is acute, at least emotionally. On the one hand, we believe that something's significance depends on proportion, meaning that nothing of infinitesimal size or scope relative to the universe as a whole can be really important. On the other hand, most of us cannot help believing that it is crucially important how we live in spite of our seeming insignificance from the vantage point of a spatially and temporally vast universe, and, furthermore, one that is, if naturalism is true, entirely unconcerned about us.
According to Dworkin, one could analyse the prospects for securing a good life through one of two primary models in light of our common human predicament: (i) the model of impact, and, the model he favours, (ii) the model of challenge.Footnote 28 I will not discuss the model of challenge, given that I am only concerned with reasonable alternative accounts for explaining the futility that is often thought to supervene on naturalistic meta-narratives. Indeed, the model of challenge is partly a response to arguments that invoke death in order to threaten the good life, and is considered immune from such arguments if one finds it plausible as an account of the good life.
The model of impact is a metric of the good life that requires a person to make a positive impact to the objective value in the world in order to secure a good life.Footnote 29 According to Dworkin, this model harmonizes with some common value judgments about the nature of the good life. For example, an inventor of a cure for a ravaging disease is thought to secure a good life, at least partly, by her helpful contribution to the world. As such, the model of impact is strongly tied to the positive consequences of a life, or activities partly constituting that life. However, the model does not capture what are thought to be other non-consequential features of the good life, for example, mastering a musical instrument simply for the sake of the activity done well. Some features of the good life, then, seem to be intrinsically valuable as ends in themselves, and the model of impact is weak at this point to account for these.
More relevant in the present context, if one takes the model of impact as the primary metric for measuring the good life, then futility looms threateningly on the horizon, as nothing we do will make an impact in any sort of deep, lasting, or ultimate sense in the universe as posited by naturalism. Even seemingly great impacts, like finding a cure for cancer, end up not mattering from the unconcerned, temporally distant perspective of a universe in ruins. On the model of impact, circumstances act as limitations, the most limiting of them all being a naturalistic understanding of human mortality, one that views mortality as final.Footnote 30 So, on this view, the reason futility is thought to supervene on the naturalistic meta-narrative follows from this conjunction – we often analyse the good life or a meaningful life in terms of the impact a life makes, but the nature of the universe, on naturalism, undercuts any real possibility for making a deep, lasting, or ultimate impact. It is worth noting also that this model presupposes something like SPI. Dworkin's model of impact, then, is one way of accounting for the perceived connection between futility and mortality specifically, or futility and naturalism in general.
There are two plausible strategies to explain how my own narrative proposal relates to Dworkin's account of the perceived connection between death and futility in a strictly naturalistic world. I am more interested in the second strategy, though the first is worth noting. Like theories of a meaningful life, it is likely that no one model captures every relevant dimension to the perceived connection between futility and mortality precisely because no one model may sufficiently capture what constitutes a meaningful life. If this is the case, then those who worry that a naturalistic conception of death threatens life with futility may both hold something like the model of impact as relevant to analysing the good life, but also think of life narratively, and thereby conclude that the way it all ends is additionally important for deciding whether or not life is futile. Therefore, it seems as though Dworkin's model of impact account and my own narrative account may not be competitors at all. Rather, they are loosely associated constructs through which we seek to understand an already enigmatic concept and the broad normative territory it encompasses, that of a meaningful life.
Second, and more importantly, I think there is a relevant sense in which accounts like Dworkin's or even Robert Nozick's – that a meaningful life is about transcending limits and mortality prohibits thisFootnote 31 – actually presuppose important elements of my own account regarding the evaluative significance of narrative ending qua ending. Remember that the threat of futility enters on Dworkin's model of impact because death in a naturalistic world prevents a positive, deep, and ultimate impact to objective value in the world. But this raises the question: Why have we allowed death and the ultimate fate of the naturalistic universe to be that which is most salient in our appraisals of whether or not our lives make an impact, are meaningful, and avoid deep or cosmic futility? The answer, I think, resides in the prior normative significance we already assign to narrative endings. Indeed, I think the point about narrative endings is more basic, and is likely presupposed in the dilemma for the good life that emerges on Dworkin's model of impact. That is, it is only because we attach such evaluative significance to endings that the worries tied to the model of impact become relevant. Death prevents a significant impact only because some choose to require significant impact, in order to be significant, to be so from the perspective of the settled end. Without the perspective of the settled end already looming large, the worry about impact will not be nearly as bothersome. But we need a deeper rationale for why the perspective of the settled end itself is important, and that deeper rationale is provided by my own account which appeals to the evaluative significance of narrative ending for broadly normative appraisals of narratives as a whole.
Meta-narrative ending, death, and cosmic futility
Understanding the relationship between futility and the meaning of life in general and futility and the naturalistic meta-narrative specifically is as much about a first-order conclusion regarding the proleptic power of narrative endings in general as it is a second-order futility conclusion based upon the nature of naturalistic meta-narrative endings. Indeed, the reason the nature of the naturalistic meta-narrative ending is thought to be normatively important for appraising the entire narrative is first anchored in the fact that narrative ending qua ending is thought to be normatively important for appraising the entire narrative. Hence, judging naturalistic meta-narratives, for example, as cosmically and deeply futile is a function of both first-order and second-order conclusions in this respect. The latter would lose all of their force if the former were absent.
As already noted, it has often been claimed that cosmic or deep futility supervenes on the naturalistic meta-narrative, a meta-narrative where death has the ‘final word’. Reference to cosmic futility, though, presupposes that we know what we are talking about when we refer to ‘futility’. As such, the concept of futility needs unpacking. Futility supervenes upon states of affairs where two conditions obtain: (i) one aims at some desired end, and (ii) attaining that desired end is impossible for one reason or another.Footnote 32 This is largely why the case of Sisyphus has been the paradigmatic example of futility in the West. On the canonical version of the story,Footnote 33 Sisyphus never accomplishes that which he aims to accomplish; namely, ascending with his boulder to the top of the hill. On the above analysis, futility would characterize a state of affairs where I, for example, aimed to research, write, and submit this paper for publication, all in twenty-four hours. There is an extreme discrepancy between an end at which I aim, and the possibility of actually accomplishing that end. My aim, given the way the world is in terms of what it takes to accomplish the above task, is futile; it ‘cannot’ be done.Footnote 34
If we take the impossibility of attaining an aim toward which one directs effort to be a sufficient, but not necessary, condition for the presence of futility, then futility likely comes in degrees. One aim can be more or less futile than another aim. On this analysis, the degree of futility that characterizes a state of affairs will be directly proportional to the implausibility (rather than impossibility) of attaining an end toward which one directs effort. For example, even though it is neither logically nor metaphysically impossible that I research, write, and submit this paper for publication in one month, it is highly unlikely. It is so unlikely, that my exerting effort to attain this end is more or less futile, though exerting the same effort in order to accomplish the task in, say, eight months is probably not futile.Footnote 35 But, since futility comes in degrees, researching, writing, and submitting this paper for publication in one month is less futile than my exertion of effort to have these things occur within two weeks, and more futile than my exertion of effort to see them occur within four months.
There is one further dimension of futility that is especially relevant here. The level of angst experienced in response to either perceived futility or genuine futility will be proportional to (i) the extent to which one is invested (emotionally, rationally, relationally, etc.) in attempting to reach some desired end, and (ii) the relative perceived desirability of the end at which one is aiming.Footnote 36 For example, the level of angst felt in a situation where someone confined to a wheelchair strongly desires to climb Mt Everest as part of securing a flourishing life will be much greater than someone who desires to mow her lawn (and enjoys mowing her lawn) on a day where unco-operative weather conditions prevent her from doing so. In both cases, it would be futile to undertake the desired activity, but the existential distress felt in response to this futility will be dramatically different. I will call this the ‘principle of proportionality’ (POP):
POP The existential angst attached to any putative instance of futility is directly proportional to the level of one's investment, broadly construed, in some desired end and the perceived desirability of that end.
Something like POP is salient in conclusions of cosmic futility given naturalistic premises, as those adopting such conclusions experience a high level of existential angst. Such conclusions are no doubt influenced by POP, as there is a prima facie discrepancy felt by many between the profound human investment in life, the deep-seated desire for that life to continue, and the fact that it will almost certainly not continue on naturalism.
The futility that often comes into focus in meaning-of-life discussions is analogous, though not identical, to that which emerged in the above analysis. The discrepancy component that produces futility remains the same, but the nature of the discrepancy is subtly different as already seen in my application of POP to futility within the meaning of life context. In the case of the futility that is sometimes thought to characterize life in a naturalistic universe, the futility is largely a function of the discrepancy between our deepest desires and the nature of the naturalistic world which seems to ultimately prevent these desires from being realized. Additionally, yet related, is the discrepancy on naturalism between a salient feature of the final state of affairs where, quite literally, nothing matters, and the current state of affairs where lots of things seem to matter (e.g. relationships, personal and cultural achievements, and scientific advancements, among others).
This futility or perceived futility can be thought of either strongly or weakly. In what can be called the ‘strong futility conclusion’ (SFC), it is thought that if the final state of affairs of the meta-narrative is one in which nothing matters, then nothing ever really mattered. SFC does have historical precedent.Footnote 37 In what can be called the ‘weak futility conclusion’ (WFC), it is thought that if the final state of affairs of the meta-narrative is one in which nothing matters, then the mattering or significance of things currently is in some way mitigated, either minimally or considerably, though probably not completely destroyed. There are those, of course, who reject SFC and probably WFC too.Footnote 38 In the words of C. S. Lewis, critics of SFC and WFC might contend that ‘instead of criticizing the universe we may criticize our own feelings about the universe, and try to show that our sense of futility is unreasonable or improper or irrelevant’.Footnote 39 Regardless of whether or not one finds either SFC or WFC philosophically plausible, the important claim for my purposes is that both SFC and WFC should be viewed as conclusions receiving momentum from a more basic source: the evaluative importance attached to narrative ending qua ending.
On the above analysis of futility, one could construe human effort rather broadly to include the wide variety of activities, achievements, and relationships that partly constitute human existence. In this case, the discrepancy upon which futility is often thought to supervene is between the profound human investment and value attached to such effort, and that neither this effort nor any of its products will last. Again, regardless of whether this conclusion of futility is itself a reasonable one, the likely rationale for why it is often adopted (as a second-order futility conclusion) lies partly, if not largely, in the discrepancy between the ending of the naturalistic meta-narrative where nothing matters, and the middle of the meta-narrative where lots of things seem to matter. In Thomas Nagel's words, this is an ‘absurdity’.Footnote 40 When human life and the activities that populate human life are viewed from a distant, detached perspective – sub specie aeternitatis – they seem to lose all value, worth, and significance.Footnote 41 Analogously, when those things which seem to matter now are viewed from the temporally distant perspective of death, in all its dimensions (both individual and cosmic), they seem to matter very little, if at all, from this final, settled ‘point of reference’ from which there is no possibility of return.Footnote 42
If the ending of a narrative takes evaluative priority in assessments of the narrative as a whole, then a meta-narrative ending where nothing matters seems to cast a threatening shadow, either weakly or strongly, over the parts of the meta-narrative where lots of things at least seem to matter. In the same way that knowing a courting relationship will end in dissolution and not marriage will affect, in some sense, how one views the relationship right now, including one's emotional participation and response to the various dimensions of the relationship, so too might the knowledge that death, not life, that non-consciousness, not consciousness, that non-love, not love will be the final word affect the perspective we adopt towards life right now. On the naturalistic meta-narrative, nothing we do, nothing we consider valuable or worthwhile or significant, no achievement, no advances in scientific understanding, no progress, and no deep, loving relationships, in any sense, will last as part of the fabric of reality. Their marks may have been significant and felt for a season, when feelers and recognizers, or possibly inventers, of significance are around, but those marks are not indelible as they are, for example, on theistic meta-narratives.
The difference, for example, between naturalistic and Christian theistic meta-narratives with respect to their final words is the difference between entropy, decay, death, and the dissolution of conditions that make love possible, on naturalism, and resurrection, recreation, limitless fecundity, and love, on Christian theism. Naturalistic meta-narratives ‘close’ with complete dissolution such that it will be as if none of this ever happened. And, from this most remote and distant perspective,Footnote 43 none of this matters. It is not significant. It is not meaningful. It was, and it is no more. No-one cares. No-one is concerned. No-one remembers. Whether the final state should be able to hold such veto power over life here and now is not the point; that it does for so many is undeniable, and I have here tried to provide a plausible rationale for why this has so often been the case by grounding second-order futility conclusions tied to the nature of naturalistic meta-narrative endings in first-order conclusions about the evaluative priority of narrative ending qua ending for normative appraisals of narratives as a whole. We want the features of human existence to matter, and to matter deeply; we want to make an indelible mark.Footnote 44 An ending of complete dissolution does not allow for this.
In the end, whether or not one deems life to be futile on naturalistic premises will be largely a function of which perspective one adopts, that of the ending or the more immediate perspective of the present or even that portion of the universe's history that is co-extensive with human history, and therefore, a season where those who care about what matters are around to care about it. Of course, given the evaluative priority of narrative ending, it may be difficult to prevent the ending's proleptic encroachment on how we view the here and now. Those who think the ending takes priority for our evaluations of whether life is characterized by cosmic or deep futility will likely side with theists like William Lane Craig:
If each individual person passes out of existence when he dies, then what ultimate meaning can be given to his life? Does it really matter whether he ever existed at all? It might be said that his life was important because it influenced others or affected the course of history. But this only shows a relative significance to his life, not an ultimate significance. … Look at it from another perspective: Scientists say that the universe originated in an explosion called the ‘Big Bang’ about 15 billion years ago. Suppose the Big Bang had never occurred. Suppose the universe had never existed. What ultimate difference would it make? The universe is doomed to die anyway. In the end it makes no difference whether the universe ever existed or not. … Mankind is a doomed race in a dying universe. Because the human race will eventually cease to exist, it makes no ultimate difference whether it ever did exist. … The contributions of the scientist to the advance of human knowledge, the researches of the doctor to alleviate pain and suffering, the efforts of the diplomat to secure peace in the world, the sacrifices of good men everywhere to better the lot of the human race – all these come to nothing. In the end they don't make one bit of difference, not one bit.Footnote 45
In such claims, Craig's implicit commitment to both SPI and SFC is clear. For human existence to avoid irredeemable futility, it must carry on in some robust sense, a sense requiring, at minimum, post-mortem survival extending endlessly into the future.Footnote 46
Those who are suspicious of Craig's and many others' stringent conditions placed upon a worthwhile, meaningful existence will side with Brook Allen Trisel:
The higher one's aspirations are, the more likely it is that the efforts associated with bringing about these goals will be considered futile or ineffective. For example, if we seek to have our works last forever, then, at some point, we will probably conclude that our efforts are futile since this goal is unachievable. However, if we have more realistic aspirations … then we would be much less likely to conclude that our efforts at achieving this goal are futile. [emphasis added]Footnote 47
The kinds of cosmic futility conclusions that Trisel criticizes are largely built around what Erik J. Wielenberg refers to as ‘final outcome arguments’.Footnote 48 It is thought by critics that such arguments are contingent upon a suspect assumption, namely, arbitrarily placing an undue amount of importance (perhaps all the importance!) on the final state of affairs to which life leads. But why place such priority on the future over the present or the past?Footnote 49 In the words of Thomas Nagel, ‘it does not matter now that in a million years nothing we do now will matter’.Footnote 50 Of course, there may be good, principled reasons for placing normative priority on the future, but such a case will not be made here.
The important point presently is that even if such criticisms of final-outcome arguments have philosophical merit, they run up against our deep narrative proclivities as human beings, proclivities out of which we assign profound normative significance to narrative endings in virtue of them being endings. Indeed, the significance we attach to narrative ending will likely make it difficult for many to adopt these ‘more realistic aspirations’ of which Trisel spoke above toward our human efforts in the face of impending and final dissolution from which there is no possibility of return. And this is largely due to the fact that SPI and either SFC or WFC gain momentum through the evaluative significance of narrative ending qua ending.
Evil, eschatology, and narrative ending
The evaluative priority of narrative ending in general and the way a narrative ends for broadly normative appraisals of narratives as a whole is not only helpful in providing a richer account for why death and futility so closely track discussions of the meaning of life, but may also add a helpful dimension to considerations of another issue closely linked to the meaning of life – the problem of evil. The ugly reality of pain and suffering, along with accompanying questions on philosophical, existential, and eschatological levels about such suffering, is one of a number of existentially relevant elements and accompanying questions of human existence for which we are seeking a larger narrative through which to understand and appraise such existentially relevant elements of life.
Though the problem of evil is multi-dimensional and most philosophical energy is often directed toward the theoretic aspects, those most relevant in the immediate context are the existential and eschatological dimensions.Footnote 51 Roughly, by ‘existential’ I mean especially the first-person, humanly centred emotive aspects of pain, suffering, and evil – largely, the feelings of angst that characterize the sufferer;Footnote 52 by ‘eschatological’, I mean future-oriented questions about whether pain, suffering, and evil will be, in some robust sense, redeemed and defeated.
Eschatology has occupied a prominent place in discussions of theodicy. Generally, it is thought by theists that, in some sense, the blessed final state is part of a fuller answer to the problem of evil. I think something is right about this approach, although I will not enter discussion of the specifics here. I am more concerned with a general point, which is – if the ending of a narrative takes some sort of evaluative priority for broadly normative appraisals of a narrative as a whole, then a ‘good ending’ to life's narrative where redemption is robustly and fully accomplished will loom large for how the entire narrative is appraised. If an ending that itself never ends is one where deep and abiding shalom is present for all eternity, then that state of affairs is really important for the entire meta-narrative, not just then, but also now.
This does not commit one to the utilitarian approach whereby the eschaton itself is somehow worth all the horrendous evil that countless millions have experienced in this life. To such a proposal, we, like Ivan Karamazov, might shudder in moral horror at the thought that the torture of even one child is worth a peaceful human destiny for all people. Of course, this might be a subtle misconstrual of what it means to say that the eschaton ‘is worth’ the pain and suffering saliently populating human history. Neither is such an approach warrant for somehow, retroactively, calling evil ‘good’. That the blessed state is blessed does not retroactively erase all the pain, suffering, and evil of post-lapsarian, pre-consummation history on the Christian theistic meta-narrative.
But none of this is the point. The very general and modest claim I am advocating is simply that, given first-order conclusions about the evaluative significance of narrative ending qua ending, and second-order conclusions based upon the nature of a given ending, some measure of plausibility is brought to the practice of enlisting eschatological considerations in the projects of defence and theodicy. The final, settled stance toward life's meta-narrative from the perspective of eternal blessedness surely makes a difference for how we evaluate the elements of the meta-narrative right now. Unfortunately (for philosophers), to try and speculate during the present portion of life's meta-narrative, if it is of the theistic variety, on how possibly this might look and what kind of difference it might make is probably mitigated by the Pauline statement, ‘For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face’ (1 Corinthians, 13.12a).Footnote 53
Conclusion
Assessments of naturalistic meta-narratives as cosmically and deeply futile, given the way they end, will likely remain prevalent as long as we continue first to attach a significant evaluative function to narrative ending qua ending for broadly normative appraisals on emotional, aesthetic, and moral levels of narratives as a whole. I have argued that understanding the connection between futility and naturalistic meta-narratives solely in terms of the nature of their endings is truncated, and that considerations of the evaluative priority of narrative ending in general add substantially to an understanding of this connection.
A robust account of the connection, then, must not only include considerations of the staying-power intuition and strong and weak versions of the futility conclusion, but should locate them within an intelligible framework, something I have attempted to accomplish by discussing the evaluative significance of narrative ending in general. As long as our views of the world continue to be powerfully shaped by our deep seated narrative proclivities, a sense of cosmic futility will likely stubbornly persist for those who worry that we might live in a Russellian universe in which, ‘buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins’,Footnote 54 lie our grandest achievements, most profound loving relationships, and our very lives themselves.Footnote 55
